Richmond County Closes Churches, Schools, Picture Shows Again Due to Flu, Jan. 216, 1919

From The Rockingham Post-Dispatch, Jan. 16, 1919

Flu Situation. . . Schools, Churches, Picture Show Closed in Four Townships. . . Hundreds of Cases Throughout County

The Richmond County Board of Health met Saturday night and passed an order closing the schools, churches, picture shows and forbidding indoor public gatherings in four townships of the county, viz: Rockingham, Black Jack, Mineral Springs and Steele’s. The schools in Wolf Pit, Marks Creek and other townships are allowed for the present to continue. This order went into effect Monday, January 13^th, and will remain in force until rescinded. The Rockingham school was closed last Monday but Mr. Bell and Miss Finlay are teaching the 11^th, or graduating, grade right on. Ten students, two boys and eight girls, are in this grade.

The Board met Monday to elect its two medical members. Under the law, the board consists of the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners (B.F. Reynolds), Mayor of the County seat town (W.E. McNair), and Superintendent of Education (L.J. Bell). These three members, therefore, met Monday and re-elected Dr. L.D. McPhail as one of its medical members, and Dr. W.C. Terry of Hamlet in place of Dr. W.L. Howell.

The board urged each physician to have every case properly isolated in the home, and the case quarantined. Every inmate of a home is not quarantined, but just those who come in contact with the case. As a matter of fact, many people think this is not going far enough; that the Board should require every home in which a case appears to be rigidly quarantined, for four days after the last case appears in such home; and not merely quarantine the isolated person who may have the flu.

There is no way of estimating even the number of cases in the county. It is epidemic in practically every portion. Whereas last fall the lower part of the county had the worst visitation now the upper part seems the hardest hit.

Hamlet is again in the throes, scores of cases being there, and over 15 deaths, white and colored, since January 1^st.

Rockingham has many cases, but none appear to be of the pneumonia type just now. The majority of the school teachers here have had it.

Pee Dee mill village number 2 appears to have the most cases of any of the mills. The company is having, assisted by the Red Cross, soups, etc., made daily for the sick, this nourishment being prepared in the domestic science room of the Rockingham school. Miss Mary Cliff Bennett, dietetic expert, is assisting the Pee Dee teachers, and other helpers, in this. The company and Red Cross have several nurses in the village.

Mrs. R.S. Leak, in the absence in Raleigh of Mrs. W.N. Everett, has charge of the Nursing department of the Red Cross.

On the whole, the situation in the county is no worse than for the past two weeks, and in some sections even an improvement is shown. Either this latest epidemic is not as virulent, or the people take to their beds at the outset and yield to treatment. At any rate, the pneumonia cases following so many attacks of flu appear to be fewer than that which prevailed in the first epidemic in October and November.